Women’s advancement getting to be a problem

Women are under-represented in the workforce globally, and if organisations maintain the current rate of progress, female representation will reach only 40% globally in the professional and managerial ranks in 2025, says Mercer’s second annual global report titled When Women Thrive.

The report says that women’s representation within organisations has declined with the rise in career levels – right from support staff through the executive level.

“The traditional methods of advancing women aren’t moving the needle, and under-representation of women around the world has become an economic and social travesty,” says Pat Milligan, Mercer’s global leader of When Women Thrive .“While leaders have been focusing on women at the top, they’re largely ignoring the female talent pipelines so critical to maintaining progress,” he says. This is a call-to-action – every organisation has a choice to stay with the status quo or drive their growth, communities and economies through the power of women. Mercer’s report finds that although women are 1.5 times more likely than men to be hired at the executive level, they are also leaving organisations from the highest rank at 1.3 times the rate of men, undermining gains at the top.

According to the report, women makeup 40% of the average company’ s workforce. There search–the most comprehensive of its kind featuring inputs from nearly 600 organisations around the world, employing 3.2 million people, including 1.3 million women – identifies a host of key drivers known to improve diversity and inclusion efforts.